Good morning. The Justice Department last year seized a superyacht as part of a crackdown on Russia’s business elite. Now a tug of war has erupted over who owns it.

What the DOJ says: The Justice Department said the $325 million yacht belongs to Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, a business tycoon-turned-politician, who was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018, accused of money laundering and tax evasion. It filed a complaint in Manhattan federal court Monday seeking the vessel’s forfeiture.

Ownership change claimed: Not true, said Eduard Khudainatov, a former president of Rosneft Oil. He sued the U.S. government Monday, saying he is the rightful owner of the Amadea, which authorities confiscated in May 2022 as part of an international effort to raise the cost to the Kremlin and its supporters of pursuing the invasion of Ukraine.

Background: The seizure of the Amadea in Fiji was among the first major, visible moves by the KleptoCapture task force, which was set up to confiscate and freeze the luxury yachts, real estate, private jets and other assets of Russian oligarchs with ties to President Vladimir Putin.

Demonstrates potential challenges: KleptoCapture’s aim is both to punish businessmen close to the Kremlin and to use the proceeds of sales of boats and mansions to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine. Justice Department officials held up the Amadea’s seizure as an early success. But the fight over its ownership highlights the challenges law-enforcement agencies across the West face as they move to confiscate assets from rich Russians.

Tesla confirms probe into executive perks and related-party deals.

Federal prosecutors have sent subpoenas to Tesla seeking information about executive perks, deals with related parties and decisions to hire or fire employees, the electric-vehicle maker disclosed Monday.

Taking a closer look at benefits. Tesla’s quarterly report to investors confirmed the investigation previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office is scrutinizing personal benefits that Tesla may have provided Elon Musk since 2017, including a proposed house for the chief executive, the Journal reported in September.

WPP fires employee detained in China, launches investigation into bribery charges.

WPP said it terminated the executive currently detained in China on charges of bribery and is conducting its own investigation into the matter.

On Saturday, the Shanghai police’s economic crimes investigation division said that three suspects at an unnamed advertising company had been detained on criminal charges of accepting bribes as nonpublic officials. That statement referred to one current and two former employees of GroupM, an ad-buying unit of WPP, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

• A global minimum tax on billionaires, equal to 2% of their wealth, could raise nearly $250 billion a year, according to a think tank co-funded by the European Union.
   
• The Biden administration is proposing major changes to the H-1B visa program for high-skilled foreign professionals, after the government found earlier this year that companies had colluded to try to increase their chances of winning a coveted visa.
   
• Two firms face allegations that their rent-pricing systems facilitate collusion among some of America's biggest apartment owners.
   
• When a Chinese regulator blocked investors from opening accounts with online brokers Futu and Up Fintech, it dealt a blow to the pair, which had for years seen mainland China as a key source of growth. But the two brokers have benefited from a sharp rise in interest rates—and some lucky timing.

Smaller banks look to shrink their way back to health.

Regional banks have shelled out more and more to depositors to get them to stick around. For many, that still hasn’t been enough.

After an ugly third quarter, banks rolled out plans last week to try to shrink themselves back to health. Profits dropped by double digits from a year earlier at a number of them, including 44% at KeyCorp, 32% at Citizens Financial and 28% at Truist Financial.

Shrink to survive? KeyCorp said it would become a “smaller, simpler company.” PNC Financial disclosed that it would lay off thousands of employees. Truist, which sold its student loan portfolio this summer, said it would downsize other books with lower returns. Citizens recently said that it would exit the auto loan business and continue to scale back its mortgage business.

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• Israel intensified its aerial bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip, striking more than 320 targets in the enclave over the past day, as concerns mount the conflict could spill over the rest of the region.
   
• A major Chinese stock-market benchmark sank to its lowest level in more than four years, signaling deep pessimism among global and domestic investors in the country.
   
• International companies began trickling out of Hong Kong a few years back, uneasy about the financial hub’s tightening ties to mainland China. That first smattering of departures is now turning into a broad retreat involving banks, investment firms and technology companies.
   
• The United Auto Workers on Monday expanded its continuing strike against Detroit’s car companies by shutting down a pickup-truck plant, a surprise action that hit Chrysler-parent Stellantis’s largest U.S. factory.
   
• Businesses weighing the risks and benefits of generative artificial intelligence are running up against a challenge social-media platforms have long wrestled with: preventing technology from being hijacked for malicious ends.
   
• There has been much talk of risk centered on credit cards and offices, and not without reason. But these aren’t usually the most important kinds of loans to the typical regional bank. Instead, a core kind of lending for many of the large regionals is to enterprises.

Marton, who left the New York financial regulator in September, will help lead Fireblocks’s efforts to develop blockchain-based compliance products, including an on-chain identity product for collecting and encrypting identity information the firm said could help prevent illicit financial activities in crypto. Marton, who started last week, will report to Jason Allegrante, the firm’s chief legal and compliance officer.

• The smell of mergers and acquisitions is in the air following more than $110 billion worth of oil megadeals this month—Chevron’s agreement to buy Hess and Exxon Mobil’s deal for Permian giant Pioneer Natural Resources. Who’s next?
   
• An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot riding in a cockpit jump seat on a regional flight was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after he allegedly tried to disable the aircraft’s engines during a flight.
   
• China hasn’t said yet whether its leader, Xi Jinping, will accept President Biden’s invitation to visit the U.S. next month, but Beijing is gearing up an American charm offensive that appears designed to prepare the way for what would be Xi’s first U.S. trip in six-and-a-half years.
   
• At a time when Apple is generally trying to depend less on China, the company is relying more on one Chinese firm whose skill at assembling the tech giant’s products has proven too valuable to dismiss.
   
• A Russian court formally arrested a U.S. journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, ordering her to be held in pretrial detention on an allegation she had failed to register herself as a “foreign agent.”

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